Welcome
to this website for EDU 5517, a pre-service science teacher
education course emphasizing student-led
research-informed and negotiated actions to address
personal, social & environmental issues
associated with fields of science and technology. This page provides
general course information and resources through the
links below:

If you have any comments, questions, suggestions,
etc., please contact me.

Course Description

IntroductionSocieties tend to place great priority on
educating young people in science and technology.
While much of that education has been ‘successful’
(depending on priorities), many observers suggest that
there are various ways in which science and technology
education could be improved. In this course, emphasis
is placed on issues of context related to fields of
science and technology. Relevant questions to explore
include: ‘What may be the nature and extent of effects
of various social factors on scientists’ topic
choice(s), methods, conclusions, and dissemination?,’
‘What are various human characteristics of scientists
and engineers?,’ ‘What specific methods might
scientists and engineers use for knowledge generation
and dissemination in realistic contexts?,’ ‘In what
ways might fields of (and practitioners in) science
and technology relate to each other?,’ ‘What are some
possible adverse effects of products of science and
technology on individuals, societies, and
environments?’ and ‘What is the nature and extent of
responsibilities students might have for how they make
use of their science education?’ In answering such
questions, the course explores teaching and learning
strategies for encouraging school students to engage
in such questions. Generally, this course focuses on
(and transcends) Expectations within the following two
domains in Ontario curricula: i) Relating Science to
Technology, Society and the Environment, and ii)
Developing Investigation and Communication Skills.
Combining these domains, specific focus is on
promotion of research-informed actions to address STSE issues.

Course MethodsThis course consists of lectures, class
discussions, demonstrations, small group activities,
between-class assignments, and various application
sessions. Instruction is based on constructivist learning
principles (e.g., Osborne & Whittrock,
1985). Briefly, this implies that learning involves
complex interactions between stimuli (e.g., what a
learner reads, hears, sees, etc.) and conceptions
(e.g., ideas, images, skills) the learner holds in
his/her mind. Consequently, it is apparent that
observing is an active, rather than a passive,
process. What a person ‘sees’ when observing phenomena
is determined more by conceptions in the person’s
brain than by stimuli from the phenomenon. Related to
this, people (including school students) tend to
resist changing their conceptions — often despite
contradictory instruction and/or experiences. Based on
constructivist learning principles, I have developed a
general teaching
and learning approach (Bencze, 2000). Although
there is flexibility inherent to the approach,
learners are encouraged to engage in different
learning ‘phases’; i.e., Expressing Ideas, Learning
Ideas (with Input & Practice) and Judging Ideas.
This course also has been inspired by a seminal
article by Dr. Derek Hodson (2003), former professor
of education at OISE, who encouraged educators to
motivate and enable students to use their education
for the common good. Information about my thinking in
this regard is available at: STEPWISE.
With these ideas and frameworks in mind, my teaching
tends to adhere to a set of
guiding
principles that have support in the academic
literature.

Although principles — and practices
indicated by them — here are broadly applicable, this course is
primarily oriented towards preparing students to work
as teachers in the province of Ontario. Teaching in
elementary and secondary schools in Ontario is
regulated by the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT).
Guiding and reflecting "exemplary teaching practice
and continuous professional improvement" in Ontario
and this course are Professional
Standards of the OCT.

AssignmentsBrief
descriptions
of the Formative and Summative assignments for this
course are provided below:

FORMATIVE
ASSIGNMENTS

Throughout the course (refer to Teacher
Education Schedule), student-teachers
are required to complete relatively ‘minor’
(short & guided) between-class and
in-class assignments. These are mainly
intended to prepare student-teachers for
the ‘summative’ assignment, described
below.

SUMMATIVE ASSIGNMENT

RiNA Resources

Students are to
produce — in collaboration with classmates —
‘ready-to-use’ educational resources for teachers that
would allow them to implement the STEPWISE
pedagogical approach. Accompanying these materials
should be Notes to the Teacher, which provide
suggestions for their use and analyses based on
educational criteria (e.g., divergence, HOTS) addressed
in the course (and beyond, if relevant). Collectively,
class members will have produced a great variety of
resources, all of which will be made available to them
at the end of the course.This multi-part assignment is to be a set
of instructional resources that all class members can
use in their teaching for encouraging and enabling
school science students to, eventually, self-direct
research-informed and negotiated action (RiNA)
projects to address ‘critical’ (involving power)
socioscientific issues (SSI) of interest to students.
Generally, these resources will consist of
ready-to-use instructional materials (e.g., student
activity sheets), along with theoretically-informed
suggestions for their uses by teachers and students.
Working in pairs (or alone, if they choose),
student-teachers may produce such resources as: SSI
case methods; RiNA apprenticeship activities (with
teacher demonstrations and student practice
activities) and an assignment sheet to guide
student-led RiNA projects on SSIs of their choice.

IntroductionGiven that the areas of
focus (i.e., STSE/NoST, Skills Education &
WISE Activism) of this course tend NOT to be
emphasized in schools, there is a need for
resources in these aspects of education. Over the
years, I have produced and gathered many
educational resources at: Educational
Resources. From this set, I provide below
links to resources for the major aspects of this
course. Additional resources are given to students
enrolled in the course via the course wiki.